Audio 2:56
Fodder convoy for drought areas

Pete LewisUpdated
Sat 8 Feb 2014, 9:38 AM AEDT

While various state and federal authorities wrestle with the best way to help rural communities through another deepening drought , farmers from southern New South Wales have rounded up nearly 500 tonnes of donated hay and trucked it to the state's north-west.

Transcript

ELIZABETH JACKSON: While various state and federal authorities wrestle with the best way to help rural communities through another deepening drought, farmers from southern New South Wales this weekend have taken matters into their own hands.

They've rounded up nearly 500 tonnes of donated hay and trucked it to the state's north-west where the situation for livestock is desperate.

The ABC's rural reporter Pete Lewis followed the convoy to Bourke.

PETE LEWIS: Bourke grazier Ben Mannix got a call two months back from a bloke he'd never met.

BEN MANNIX: Anyway, I rang Brendan back, and Brendan said "you don't know me". And I said, "No Brendan, I don't know you from a bar of soap". And he said "I want to help you", and that's where it began.

PETE LEWIS: Southern New South Wales sheep and wheat farmer Brendan Farrell, who'd heard about the worsening situation up here on the ABC's 'Country Hour'.

BEN MANNIX: It's a fantastic gesture. It's not something that's going to save us, but it's certainly something that brings a lot of hope and it just makes people - it lifts you. It makes you feel good to know that other people care about you.

PETE LEWIS: Brendan Farrell figured he could rustle up a truckload or two of hay and send it north. His phone and Facebook site has run hot with offers - so much free hay that it's taken 18 semi trailers to haul it from one end of New South Wales to the other.

BRENDAN FARRELL: It's probably paying a bit forward, I suppose, and that's what it's all about. We've been through droughts down home. We had an eight year drought. But at the end of the day, if we can bring hay up here and make farmers smile, that's my job done.

SHARON KNIGHT: People are saying to me, 'look, I can't do it anymore. I'm not going through another drought.' This one has hit with a vengeance, and it's just been really intense for them.

PETE LEWIS: Sharon Knight has been a rural financial counsellor in Bourke for 20 years - she reckons the convoy will make an enormous difference to people and their livestock.

SHARON KNIGHT: People have said 'I can't believe it, that people want to do a good deed for us'. Yeah, they're blown away with the generosity.

PETE LEWIS: Ben Mannix reckons coming to town to shake the hands of the people behind this gesture and buy them a beer will be almost as good as soaking rain.

BEN MANNIX: It certainly will. It'll have a wonderful gesture for the people. Just to get off your farm and get away and to come in tonight and to have a meal and have a yarn to the blokes who've brought the hay up. It's just a wonderful gesture,e and it gets you out of your farm because it can be very depressing on the farm when you're in it day in, day out. It gets hard.

PETE LEWIS: But the Good Samaritan says he's getting as much out of this as he's giving.

BRENDAN FARRELL: Look, I hear stories all the time of farmers struggling. I've got three young kids under four, and you hear of farmers that are doing silly things and they can't cope. I just look at my kids and just go 'right, well what I'm doing is good.'